I agree with you. I debated buying the Prime or the 2012 iPAD and the for me it simply came down to freedom. Even though I was absolutely amazed with display of the 2012 iPAD, I love the freedom that I have with Android. I'm a tinkerer and the ability to play with my device at a level beyond just playing games, or watching movies is essential for me. I don't want to be forced into a requirement of requiring anything other than proper drivers for connecting to and managing my device (specifically talking about Itunes here).Of course Android is like the wild wild west when it comes to apps though. Trying to navigate that landscape and get the best app for the job can be a bit tricky at times. And app makers have a tough time supporting it simply because of the myriad of distinct hardware and OS versions. As an example, the HBO GO app is not supported on the TP running ICS :( ) As another example, when I owned the Galaxy Tab 10.1, I tried getting some my HD anime to play on it and had a horrible experience using the built in video player. Then a buddy of mine's told me to check out Dice Player which played the same video on the same hardware with no issues.So some ecosystem issues really need to be sorted out to make it really competitive to the iPAD..Reply

That's great that you like your hardware that has a worse screen, worse GPU, and worse battery life, but what do you DO with it? I mean, we all know there are still basically no decent Android tablet apps.Reply

See Anandtechs review of the new iPad. Terga 3 is not slow, nor worse battery life. And the screen is good, better that most tablets at 1280x800. So far I love it, comics, magazines, games. And the Games are good. meany Tegra 3 enhanced. I can play Shadow gun and other games though HDMI in 3D on my 3d Tv at home in!

It is a great tablet, So when you say Android tablet are not decent, I don't understand.

It's not about you liking it or enjoying it. If that were the case, why are you even here? This is about what is technically the difference. One of superior in several ways, the other has a slightly brighter screen.

if you're going to sit and argue that you 'enjoy' is so you 'don't understand', then you have failed to see the point of revives like this. Some people still enjoy their gen 1 iPad gen1 Droid tablets, good for them?Reply

Well I think you are wrong when you say there aren't any decent Android tablets. The Samsung Galaxy 10.1, the Asus Transformer Prime - these are all great examples of tables that are > decent.And I think are also wrong on the battery life. The TP has an amazing battery life from my perspective.To each his own frankly. I think the new iPAD is an amazing tablet, it's just to restrictive for how I like to play.Reply

How does that comment make him an apple fanboi? The comment he replied to makes little sense and is more of a rambling rant. I personally don't own a single apple product and never will but the original comment is gibberish.

There is one version of transformer prime the TF-201 it is available in two colors and multiple storage sizes so any retard can figure out whats what. There is a TF-101 which is the original transformer but it's not a prime notice the helpful model number.

The GalaxyTAB is a different story given the naming scheme of the upcoming refreshes but for the current 10.1 it's only slightly less clear then the transformer but the only real differences are the modems Wifi, 3g, and LTE and again storage size though Apple has forced it with the 10.1N in Europe with the cool front facing speakers that I wish my tab had. Reply

Yes, the OP had difficulty in making his point. I felt that the poster attacked his grammar when it was he made little attempt to understand the OP. If he was so smart he could have inferred the OP's sentiments.Reply

His point is the naming is pretty dumb. I got it, and he's right. I think you have a hard time understanding, probably because you read 'Let's poke a stick into Apple' and knew you were going to rip on the poster regardless of his opinion. I have the same opinion about Android 4 being called ICS. Why are we keeping track of their cute naming gimmicks when numbers would work fine?

Thankfully this website avoids calling Apple 'Cupertino' every chance they get like some others out there.Reply

The name is not "the New iPad". It's just simply iPad. And this is not something entirely new from Apple. I'm suprise that Anand did not mention this on his more comprehensive new iPad review since he himself owns a Macbook Pro which always remains as Macbook Pro through different generational upgrades.

The iMac since its introduction in 1998 has been always officially called iMac by Apple. So is the Macbook Pro, iPod, and just about almost all Apple's products have no distinct numeration or version appended to it. This year when Apple releases the new Macbook Pro (and it will be called the Macbook Pro) the old version will no longer be available for sale.Reply

Do you get confused by today becoming yesterday tomorrow? I surely hope now. The word 'new' works in the same way except that it's not the spinning of the Earth that determines the change, but the release cycle of the iPad.

We see this with products all the time. "The new Ford Ranger." I can't imagine someone getting confused by this who isn't living moment at the same point in time..Reply

The article has a series of close-ups showing the individual pixels on various displays. Of all of these, the iPad3 seems to have the worst fill factor (also known as aperture ratio: http://www.epson.jp/e/products/device/htps/tech/te... The fill factor is the percent of the display that is actually transmitting light (i.e., if you've got a lot of black around each pixel, you have a low fill factor). At least for video displays (TVs, projectors), increasing the fill factor significantly improves the quality of the picture -- and this holds even if you are in a regime where you can't see the individual pixels (e.g., sitting 12 feet away from a 1080p image projected on a 100" screen). That, for instance, is one of the reasons the JVC LCoS projectors provide such a pleasing, natural looking images -- the fill factor of the LCoS chip is ~.9. I've not seen the iPad3 display, but I wonder if the mediocre fill factor might take something away from the picture quality potentially achievable with such a high pixel density. Note also that a low fill factor will not affect any of the measurements done in this article (contrast, brightness, etc.). Thus it has an effect that can only be evaluated subjectively.Reply

For any given manufacturing process, as pixel density increases, aperture ratio decreases.For example suppose hypothetically there is a 10 micon gap between pixels. A display with 1000 pixels horizonally would have 999 x 10 micron vertical gaps between pixels, while a 2000 pixel display would have 1998 vertical gaps between pixels - some concept applies vertically. Thus by definition doubling pixels in each dimension doubles the amount of space.

This is just how things are. Obviously manufacturers attempt to pack the pixels more tighly, but it's not as though there's all this excessive space - thus for a given manufactoring process increasing pixel density decreases aperture ratio.Reply

Thanks for your comment, but I'm afraid I disagree. Yes, it is geometrically correct to say that "for any given *pixel spacing*, as pixel density increases, aperture ratio decreases." However, it is *not* the case that, when the manufacturing process changes to increase pixel density, pixel spacing must necessarily be maintained. Indeed, if you look at the close-up of the iPhone 4S display, you will see that, compared to the iPad3, the former has both a higher pixel density and a higher aspect ratio. This thus serves as a clear counterexample to your assertion.

More broadly, the formulation of your argument -- that "for any given manufacturing process, as pixel density increases, aperture ratio decreases" -- didn't make sense to me since, by definition, a change in the pixel density means a change in the manufacturing process.Reply

Why would you ever test off-screen rendering on a device that's single differentiating feature is the screen resolution? Of course the 4-core SGX543 is going to blow away the dual-core version, and the single-core SGX540 doesn't stand a chance. To me, the iPad 2012 should really have an eight-core SGX543, 4 times more raw power than the iPad 2, because the new screen has 4 times the pixels.

Everyone is saying how great the iPad 2012 is going to be for gaming, but I don't see the numbers adding up. If you look back at the previous graphics tests this site did on the iPad 2012, you'll notice that the iPad 2 either matches or beats the new one when doing textured and lit triangles at native resolutions. Sure, games can render off-screen to non-native buffer sizes, but then they're going to need a special iPad 2012 render path to take advantage of the faster GPU, and then why not do a special version that take advantage of the hi-res screen? Oh yeah, because it the GPU won't be able to keep up trying to fill that many pixels, so the special versions either: a) run faster at the same res at the iPad2 versions, except it's probably already refreshing faster than most folks can perceive; or b) run slower than the iPad2 version, but have 4 times the pixels, pixels which most folks wouldn't be able to discern during fast action even at the lower resolution.

So now apps on the Apple App Store could potentially exist in 4 different versions: 2 (iPad versions) which would not work on the lowest supported iDevice, the iPhone 3GS, and 1 (iPhone Retina version) which would work, but not look or feel any differently (although it could potentially be slower due to the 4x larger graphics). This is pretty much the definition of fragmentation.Reply

Despite the small number of OS versions for iOS and the small number of different hardware configurations, I still have plenty of problems and crashes. Since developers can now easily update their software after it has been released, I think it's lead to the mentality of "We'll fix that bug later, it doesn't have to be perfect". I'm not sure how much of an advantage less software and hardware fragmentation actually provides when developers just want to get their software to market as quickly as possible without testing it thoroughly.

Oddly enough, developers seem to be able to make reliable applications for desktop/laptop computers that have thousands of different hardware configurations and many OSes.Reply

Anand specifically mentioned in the full review that the popular route for Retina apps will be offscreen buffers and gives the Infinity Blade 2 update as an example which renders 1.4x the pixels compared to the iPad 2 and then scales to 2048 x 1536.

And I think concerns about the Retina iPad forcing 4 different versions of each app are exaggerated. For one, it won't go over well with gamers. Separate iPad and iPhone versions is likely the most people will tolerate. Even the new Sky Gamblers Retina iPad showpiece is Universal and compatible back to the iPhone 3GS while still providing iPad 2012 specific graphical effects. Infinity Blade Dungeons has been announced to be compatible with A5 devices and possibly A4 devices, and given the rest of the series, will most likely be Universal as well. And in a year when developers really develop games that push the 2012 iPad, the iPhone 3GS will no longer need to be supported seeing it isn't likely to get iOS 6. That drops having to develop assets for 3 classes of resolution (480x320, 960x640/1024x768, 2048 x 1536) to 2 classes of resolution (960x640/1024x768, 2048 x 1536) which should simplify things.Reply

There's no fragmentation here, there's no need for different versions. Existing games may have to run at a lower resolution, such as Infinity Blade 2 which runs at native on the iPad 2, but roughly only 1430x1050 on the iPad 3. The Bard's Tale runs at 60 FPS at native on the iPad 2, but it runs at 1536x1152 on the iPad 3, and that resolution happens to be exactly double the pixels of the 1024x768.

Then, you've got other games like Modern Combat 3, which runs at 2048x1536, or Real Racing 2 which runs at 2048x1536. (And more...)

All in all, it depends on the game whether or not it'll run at the native resolution or not. There's obviously some aspects of a game, such as Infinity Blade 2, which is taxing the PowerVR SGX543MP2, and scales linearly with an increase in pixels, and other elements of games such as Real Racing 2 or Modern Combat 3, which either don't scale linearly or that simply aren't taxing the MP2.

New games should all run near the higher resolution, if not native, of the iPad 3.Reply

How can you tell from the outside look if you stare at an iPad 2 or the new iPad? I know the dimensions or weight are not the same, but unless you have one of them in one hand and the other in the other hand...Reply

Why do you care?Do you make a habit of judging people by whether or not they have the latest version of some hardware?Are you trying to figure out if it's worth your while to steal the device?

We've had a year of iPhone4S that can only be distinguished from iPhone4 and the world has gone on just fine. Not to mention that the Sandy Bridge MacBook Air can hardly be distinguished from the previous MacBook Air, likewise for MacBook Pro. Pretty much EVERY iPod Touch has looked the same. etc etc.Reply

I still think showing benchmarks at a fixed resolution is kind of misleading to consumers. The new GPU might be twice as fast as the old one in the iPad 2, but it has to push 4x more pixels, and for retina-compatible apps and games, the iPad 3 should actually be slower than iPad 2.

So people will buy the device thinking it's so much faster, when in fact it isn't - just because they saw benchmarks that evaluated only the GPU on a theoretical resolution - rather than evaluating it at its actual resolution.Reply

That's not indicative of the real world though, Infinity Blade 2 runs at 1.4x 1024x768 on the iPad 3, roughly 1430x1050 I'd say. And Modern Combat 3 runs at 2048x1536. It depends on the game.

I think games with heavy shading like Infinity Blade 2 aren't going to be running at native resolution on the iPad 3, but games like Modern Combat 3 which have light shading but very high resolution textures, will be able to.Reply

None. It’s just a simple way to find fault with the iPad 3 and the benchmarks. The fact that the iPad 2 already was more than a year ahead of every other tabler performance-wise doesn’t even enter into the picture.

That's unlikely, the XBox 360's GPU does 500m triangles a second, and the SGX543MP4 only roughly 180m. The iPad 3 however is running many games at near 2048x1536, whereas the 360 runs most at 1280x720. (Three times less pixels.)

We'll start to see console quality games when the PowerVR 600 series GPUs are released... even one of the entry level models does 300m triangles a second, which is ten times that of the SGX543.Reply

Anand, could you please add to a future reviews a chart with white brightness in nits at minimum backlight level?

It corresponds to how usable device is in the dark, for example checking email in bed with your spouse sleeping.

The last device I owned which was comfortable for reading in the dark was Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It was almost on par with phosphorescent hands / dial found in wrist watches. Great contrast and not blinding. Some of the old UIQ smartphones was fine too in that regard. It was 6 years ago.

When LED became mainstream, things got ugly.

No display maker gives a shit anymore about mechanics of human sight, all that matters is the "Maximum brightness" and "The contrast ratio".Contemporary devices tend to burn your eyes out in pitch-darkness. Neither iPad nor iPhone can't be used in the dark, they're too bright. You get temporary blind to environment and an eye strain from looking at the strong light source in the darkness.

But the result is light years away from true, hardware-based low backlight level. The hack is just reducing contrast by making white closer to black, but it doesn't make "black" pixels any better, they are still emitting light. The dimmer the picture, the less contrast you have left.

To sum up the above, minimum backlight level in nits will make great addition to any mobile screen review.Reply

It's too bad that the favorite tablet on the site isn't selling. It's hardly useful to have a decent tablet out if no one is buying it. Perhaps it's really true that a tablet, other than an iPad (which was considered to be pretty cheap when it came out), can't sell unless it's cheap.

Hoping to see the HTC One X reviewed in detailed soon. Please tell me it is in the pipeline. And hopefully the HTC One S too.Also looking forward to reading about the usability of the Ipad for general purposes in real life as well as an educational tool.Reply

Well, if only compare the specs, I would like choose the new iPad.As I went to the Apple sale store tried the New iPad, I really like the the retina display and better camera. And would upgrade to the iPad 3 soon!Hope can get much surprises from it and surprised with mirror playing 1080p on the TV! And I found some cool iPad tips&Apps from iFunia iPad Column, are very informative and useful.Reply

I have the iPad 3, and let me tell you, everything on it feels so buttery smooth compared to any android tablet I've ever used including the very newest ones. The "feel" of the iPad 3s just blows the others out of the water, and the screen is absolutely to die for! I mostly posted this comment just to try out the new dictation feature. Flawless. So nice to not have to type anymore. There's a reason why iPads are selling like mad, once you actually use an iPad for a while, nothing else comes close.Reply